The Senescent Man

The brilliant Peggy Noonan again sees through the fog and tells us something important about government, the media, and us.

The FBI is investigating 2 Democratic Party researchers after they illegally obtained a credit report on Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, in the hope of finding information to use against him in his likely upcoming run for the Senate. After it became public, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Commitee acknlowledged the resignation of the 2 staffers.

Politics in Maryland have become brutal since the election of our only Republican Gov. in over 30 years - there are many that have not been able to accept the change in leadership. Be prepared for things to get much nastier in the months leading up to election time........

Read more here.......

Some people are either stupid or malicious when they give bad advice. Former Pres. Clinton is advising current Pres. Bush to repeal the tax cuts enacted a few years ago, even thought it was demonstrated that those cuts generated more revenue than would have been confiscated by the IRS had there been no cuts. He pulls out all the emotional reasons, of course -- class envy, fear of deficit spending, foreign control of the economy, etc. And of course the MSM lap it up as if it were a revelation from on high.

Okay, Mr. President if you're convinced you're right, let's see you "tax" yourself first. Turn in all your excess income and set an example to inspire the people. ..... We're waiting.....

Read about it here if you can stand it.

From Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard:

Lost in this week's coverage of New Orleans and the Roberts's confirmation hearings has been the goings on in Gaza. After the Israeli pullout, Palestinians have arrived to claim the land as their own. The accounts of this homecoming should startle and deflate anyone who thinks that the Palestinian side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is either ready, willing, or capable of peace.

The blog Little Green Footballs has done fine work collecting accounts of the Palestinian homecoming. Some highlights:

* First came the looting and arson. As the Jerusalem Post reported,

Hours after the IDF rolled out, vans bristling with masked gunmen and blaring martial music rolled into this abandoned settlement, passing donkey carts laden with loot and families picnicking on yellowing lawns. . . .

By early Monday morning, tens of thousands swarmed the settlements celebrating what leaders here called "a day of rebirth of the Gaza Strip."

Students cut school, the terrorist groups carted out their homemade RPGs and prayed in the settlements' smoldering synagogues, the poor scavenged the settlement carcasses, and the PA police and other security forces watched. Looters torched synagogues and ripped what they could from what were considered the settlements' sturdiest buildings. . . .

By mid-morning columns of black smoke twisted skyward marking where individual settlements had been. . . .

Inside the Kfar Darom synagogue, crushed matza mingled with shattered glass and chunks of metal wrenched from their moorings.

A lone green swastika was spray painted on the Neveh Dekalim synagogue. . . .

A Khan Yunis man steered his donkey cart through a haze of smoke into the Neveh Dekalim synagogue's main chamber to load up the aluminum he had stripped from the window frames.
You can perhaps imagine the outrage if a Jew or even a regular infidel so dishonored an Islamic hold site.

* Then the Gaza greenhouses, which had been left behind as a gift from a private foundation and were a key to the region's agriculture were destroyed.

* Within days, weapons smuggling from Egypt had resumed.

* Armed militants began establishing checkpoints, independent of the rule of the Palestinian Authority.

* Hamas fighters blew a hole in the Egyptian border.

* Then, to top things off, Hamas promised to use Gaza to destroy Israel. The AFP reported:

Officers from Hamas's militia are vowing to turn Gaza into a huge armed camp devoted to digging Israel's grave, with tunnels, rocket attacks and a free flow of weapons and militants from Egypt. . . .

Ground commanders, with bushy black beards and pistols strapped to their sides, rode defiantly in a convoy of 50 jeeps and SUVs to cheers of Allah Akbar (God is Great) from a rapt crowd.
Many officers remained unmasked, in testimony to their soaring confidence after Israel ended its 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip on Monday.

Commanders from Hamas's Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades armed wing spoke triumphantly of their post-Israeli withdrawal war strategy from the Gaza Strip.

They sketched out a vision of tunnels into Israel, regular rocket attacks on the Jewish state; a free flow of weapons and militants from Egypt; and constant smuggling to the West Bank.
They spoke of their determination to turn the strip of Mediterranean coast, home to 1.3 million people, into an armed camp intent on the destruction of the Jewish state with a Palestinian Authority powerless to stop them.

We celebrate the first anniversary of this blog which was launched on September 11, 2004, with a piece in the WSJ by Mark Helprin.

Mark writes again in the recent WSJ Opinion Journal. And here's a taste:

Having made many wrong choices, we find ourselves at yet another strategic crossroads, where invisibly to the general public we are about to choose wrongly again. We are reshaping the military into a gendarmerie, configured for small wars, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping and nation-building, all at the expense of the type of force that could deter or defeat a rising China. Although we need a gendarmerie, we cannot do without heavy formations and the many additional ships required for a navy--now less than half the size of the Reagan fleet and shrinking--to exploit our natural advantage in the Pacific.

Recommend reading the whole thing.

Robert Tracinski, editor of "The Intellectual Activist", has written a very interesting analysis of hurricane Katrina and the carnage that followed. Says Tracinski - "The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view. The man-made disaster is the welfare state. "

He goes on - "All of this is related, incidentally, to the incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. In a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters—not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency. "

This article goes on to explain how decades of entitlement perverted the morals and values of so many citizens in one city that this debacle was inevitable....it was a man-made disaster just waiting to happen. Read the complete article here.

As hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, a hurricane of another sort was passing from this world. Jude Wanniski, the journalist/economist who brought "supply-side economics" into the Reagan administration and prosperity to America, died of a heart attack on August 29, 2005.

Read this tribute by Robert Novak and then go read Jude's book , The Way the World Works, and then check out Supply-Side University if you truly want to understand economics.

In the several brief email exchanges I had with him, Jude was terse and no-nonsense in replies to my questions and comments. We disagreed on a couple of things, but I gained a perspective that would have been missed otherwise. Jude was not easily dissuaded from his opinions and often alienated those who weren't willing to take the risks he was to understand people and ideas, particularly the unpopular people and ideas. One thinks that he might have been more successful overall if he had not been so forthright in voicing his thoughts, but then that wouldn't have been Jude. We can be grateful that the legacy of written work he has left behind is available on the web for all to see and learn from. He gave away knowledge for free, asking only an honest effort to understand.

Regarding the devastated population in the Gulf Coast area former President Bill Clinton says "Our government failed those people in the beginning, and I take it now there is no dispute about it. One hundred percent of the people recognize that -- that it was a failure."

Duh. When is it otherwise? Not always complete failure, but often a good sized chunk of failure. Remember, this quote is from the guy who wanted the Government to run Health Care and every other conceivable facet of your life ... Oh, and his wife still thinks that's a good idea.

Read more here.

Mayor Stephen P. Laffey of Cranston will make a major announcement on Thursday, September 8, at 6 PM at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 1047 Park Avenue, Cranston.

It has long been rumored that Laffey might challenge so-called Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee. A run for the Senate would be an interesting scenario for the nation, as a much more consistent Republican could emerge from such a race. On the other hand, Cranston could fall prey to Michael Pisaturo, a gay fromer state legislator with an abismal record as a member of the city council these past two years, who now wants to be mayor.

Moreover, a Laffey race for the US Senate is not a sure win for him. He faces either Secretary of State Matt Brown or former state Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse; the latter will put on a fierce battle.

But it will be interesting, and one could argue that we are due for someone from Rhode Island to attend to national matters in the Senate with a degree of sanity for a change.

From the WSJ:

Among the many victims of Hurricane Katrina storm is Fats Domino. The 77-year-old rock-and-roll legend, who decided to ride out the storm at his home in New Orleans's low-lying 9th Ward, is missing, according to his agent and his niece. Agent Al Embry told the AP that he hasn't had contact with Mr. Domino since Sunday. His niece posted a message at Craigslist.com looking for information, saying she believed that he and family members were trapped in their home. Mr. Domino is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, having sold more than 110 million records, including his singles "Blueberry Hill" and "Ain't That a Shame." His 1950 recording of the song "The Fat Man" may be the first true rock-and-roll record.